Your marketing team is busy. The calendar is full. There are blog posts going out, LinkedIn updates being posted, and newsletters being sent.
But if you look at your pipeline, it’s flat. You might be wondering why B2B revenue stagnates while scaling.
This is the classic "Activity Trap." It is the most common problem I see in companies generating €4M to €10M in revenue. You have plenty of motion, but no progress.
The solution isn't to hire more people or add more channels. It is to do less.
In this article, you will learn:
The "Activity Trap" is a common dysfunction where marketing teams prioritize high-volume output (publishing articles, posting daily, sending newsletters) over measurable business outcomes (qualified leads, pipeline revenue). It creates a false sense of productivity while failing to generate actual growth, often affecting companies in the €4M–€10M revenue range.
Most B2B marketing teams measure success by output:
These are activities. They are easy to track, but they often hide a lack of a resource-efficient marketing strategy. I call this "pure actionism." It feels like work, but it doesn't move the needle.
Achievement looks different. It measures outcomes:
If an activity does not lead to an achievement, it is a distraction. And right now, your team is likely spending half their week on distractions.
Agencies often profit from adding complexity. They push for more deliverables, which means a higher retainer. Your in-house team, however, profits from clarity. You need to stop renting marketing and start building an asset. Every hour spent on a low-impact blog post is an hour stolen from a high-impact ICP interview.
A "Kill List" marketing audit is a strategic process to identify and eliminate low-value tasks. You list every recurring marketing activity and categorize it into three buckets: Keep (revenue drivers), Automate (operational tasks), or Kill (high-effort, low-impact tasks). The goal is to cut 50% of work that does not directly map to pipeline generation.
We do this in the Diagnosis phase of our EnablementOS program, but you can start this process today.
Create a simple spreadsheet with every recurring task your marketing team does. Then, force every item into one of three buckets:
These are the tasks that directly create conversations or pipeline.
These are necessary, but low-value tasks that distract from strategy.
These are high-effort, low-impact tasks. They exist because "we've always done them."
To identify "fake work," apply the 3-Question Filter to every activity.
Ask:
Your team will fight to keep their tasks. They will say things like, "But we need brand awareness!" Challenge that with these three questions:
The "30-Day Pause" is a risk-free way to test your audit findings. Instead of permanently deleting assets, you simply stop performing the "Kill List" activities for 30 days. If traffic remains stable and lead quality does not drop, you prove that those activities were not driving revenue and can be permanently removed.
The scary part of auditing is the fear of missing out. "What if we need that blog post later?" Here is the safest way to test your Kill List:
Take everything in the "Kill" bucket and stop doing it for 30 days.
Don't delete the accounts or assets, just stop the ongoing work.
What usually happens:
We have seen companies cut 75% of marketing spend while increasing conversion by applying this logic.
You cannot scale if your foundation is cluttered.
Real growth, the kind that lets you control your future without depending on agencies, starts with focus. This is the core of our 90-day roadmap to a predictable pipeline.
When you cut the 50% of tasks that don't matter, you make room for the strategy that does. You move from reactive "firefighting" to a structured, scalable system.
So, look at your marketing calendar today. If it doesn't map to revenue, get rid of it.
No, low-impact content has minimal SEO value. The strategy is to shift from creating 10 average, generic articles to creating 2 highly targeted, data-backed articles that directly answer a buying question for your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This increases your long-term relevance and authority. To do this, you must improve your B2B messaging to focus on customer pains, not just keywords.
The biggest offender is generic social media activity. This means posting daily on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, or even Twitter without a clear content strategy that leads to a conversion touchpoint. If the channel isn't generating qualified leads or building sales relationships, it is a time sink.
Frame the audit as a promotion, not a punishment. The message is: "We're not firing the project; we're promoting your time to higher-impact work." Explain that the goal is to shift from being a content factory (activity) to a strategic B2B pipeline growth focus.
Focus on the high-leverage activities identified in the "Keep" list:
